Grooved Arête - Tryfan

Grooved Arête on Tryfan, in Snowdonia. A rainy day, but we managed to climb it anyway.

Tryfan, 917 m / Grooved Arête, East Face

HVD 4a / 8-9 pitches / ~240 m / rhyolite

A wet day in Ogwen. The rock on Tryfan’s east face never really dried out, so most of the route was climbed damp, moving together where the ground was easy and belaying properly where it wasn’t. Sloping rhyolite holds under a film of water make even easy pitches feel serious.

Despite that, we got it done. The route is long and rambling rather than hard, with the climbing concentrated in a couple of pitches and a lot of straightforward ground between them. It stays interesting the whole way and finishes close to the summit — which, on a day like that, we saw very little of.

Logistics

Approach

From the roadside parking west of Llyn Ogwen, up past Little Tryfan and onto the Heather Terrace, which is followed to the start of the route. Around 45 minutes to an hour.